


flower child

by deniigiq



Series: Inimitable Verse [6]
Category: Daredevil (TV), Deadpool - All Media Types, Spider-Man - All Media Types, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: Card Games, Children, Family Feels, Gen, I dunno if it would be considered friends so much as aquaintances and potentially enemies, M/M, Making Friends, Team Bonding, Team Dynamics, Team Red, Team as Family, Wedding Planning, Well - Freeform, the fight to be flower girl
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-02
Updated: 2018-12-02
Packaged: 2019-09-05 15:58:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16813822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deniigiq/pseuds/deniigiq
Summary: Matt gave the kid a high-five for trying to fight an alien.(Matt meets the little ones of Team Red. He remains the worst influence.)





	flower child

**Author's Note:**

> so i figured after the most recent news we could all use a little bit of comfort. happy sunday y'all, make it stop raining over here pls

Little Spidey was practically laying on him, demanding to know when Matt was coming and Peter could not for his life figure out what horrible thing she was planning to do to him.

“Are they picking a venue?” Louis asked as he taped up Miles’s cheek against his will. Peter paused in the mending of the kid’s mask.

“Matt can only get married at Clinton’s church,” he said. “If they say they’re venue-shopping, It’s a formality.”

“Can I be his flower girl?” Little Spidey asked with her cheek smashed against Peter’s shoulder.

“Wade’s called dibs.”

“Goddamnit, Wade.”

Matt and Co. had indeed not come to pick a venue, but rather to do some lawyer-y things with a friend of theirs calling bullshit on a huge corporation. Peter saw neither hide nor hair of any of their party until the second day they were in town, after what he determined must have been a marathon research session in the law offices of Portman & Hernandez.

Team Daredevil extended was alarmingly caffeinated and vibrating when they met up on the designated roof. Fogs kept telling Kirsten to shut up with flailing arms when she hadn’t even said anything.

Matt explained later (post-sleep) that Kirsten’s favorite thing in the world was to take all Foggy’s ideas and mangle them into sieves and then sweetly hand them back with the phrase, “but I mean, you’re the one with more experience here.” So much so that, to poor Fogs’s dismay, a little Kirsten now lived in his head and cheerfully scattered seeds of self-doubt everywhere she went.

Kirsten’s second favorite thing in the world was to tuck her chin between her palms and beam at Fogs while he waged war with this tiny being.

Little Spidey invited herself and the team to dinner with Peter and these poor, overly educated chumps in the aftermath of getting their asses handed to them by the newest, most dangerous copycat they’d yet encountered. She declared that it was a hard day and they all deserved something fucking nice for once.

Peter tried to get Miles to join them, but he was still all puffed up and pissed off from the fight. He’d been offended that some other wannabe Spiderman had stolen his black suit design, and Peter had had to toss him over his shoulder and gun it before the kid threw down with what Peter could now declare with dead certainty was an alien.

Matt gave the kid a high-five for trying to fight an alien.

To Peter’s horror, this cheered Miles up enormously and he decided that Mr. Daredevil was cooler than all the rest of them squares.

He agreed to join them for dinner after he called his mom to let her know he’d be out for a few hours longer.

Matt, Peter realized, collected children despite his overwhelming hatred of them. This was a man who told anyone who would listen that he and Fogs didn’t need no fucking kids, they already had like thirty houseplants.

Foggy, of course, adored children. He’d fawned all over Peter and Michelle and Ned when they were kids, had dutifully sobbed his eyes out at their graduation with Wade. He’d had extensive conversations with May about the ups and downs of adoption, which Matt could sense like a bat.

No kids, Matt would interrupt before introducing the houseplant mantra into play.

Absolutely kids, Foggy countered as soon as he exited the conversation.

It was somewhat a surprise then, that when Matt came back to New York, he had a bevy of children waiting for him. There was Alma and Dave’s daughter Charlie and Foggy’s nieces and nephews, and now Miles.

And Matt apparently hated all of them. To negligibly varying degrees, or so he said.

This, Peter thought, made them love him more.

“You’re _Daredevil_ ,” Alma informed him when Team Spidey swung by to see the church which Matt was persuading Foggy’s mother into accepting. She was of the option that the requisite Nelson attendees would not fit in this church, Matt explained to Peter.

“I told her that they could have both aisles but she started crying?” he said, baffled. “I mean, it’s not like I’ve got enough people to fill more than the first row or two. But I guess there’s Team Red and Kirsten and Karen and maybe Jessica and company, but surely we aren’t going to need more than maybe four rows at the most.”

“Hey, you’re _Daredevil_ ,” Alma reminded him. Matt paused and looked down to locate the source of the noise.

“You talking to me?” he asked, once he’d found Alma clinging to Peter’s waist as she did all the fucking time now, for fuck’s sake.

“Yeah!” she chirped right back. “You’re the one who voted me into the team before Mr. Deadpool made me, uh.” She referred to Peter for the right word. Because this was his life now.

“Withdraw.”

“Yeah! That one!”

Matt didn’t remember any of this shit because he picked a fight with Wade twice a week and it had been a couple since this incident.

“…kay,” he decided on.

“I told Mr. Spiderman that you’re the coolest, but he doesn’t believe me.”

Matt was not moved by this appeal to his ego.

“What’s the coolness factor here, though?,” he asked, “Because if we’re talking in terms of responsibility, I’m about a negative one.”

“Justice,” Alma declared.

She had Matt’s attention. Peter could consider himself good and abandoned at this point. Matt stooped to better inspect his fanatic supporter.

“Say that again,” he prompted. Alma beamed at him and let go of Peter’s arm to stand up tall and proud.

“You’re cool because of justice,” she said. “Everyone else are losers who voted against me joining Team Red, but you listened to the _facts._ ”

He had not, child. He’d listened to Angel and Wade’s irritation and followed it to its source.

“I could make something of you,” Matt said contemplatively. He tucked two fingers under Alma’s chin and tipped her face up a little bit. Peter made the executive decision to terminate this interaction immediately.

“ANGEL, YOUR SIBLING IS BEING CORRUPTED,” he shouted over the fuss in the courtyard outside the restaurant they were waiting in front of.

“BITCH, HANDS OFF.”

Miles liked Matt firstly because he encouraged rogue behavior, but also because he would always sided with the underdog.

And Miles was always the underdog.

Matt tolerated Miles. He may have even liked Miles, which was so shocking that even Karen pointed it out. She slumped deep in her seat at Wade’s kitchen table until she was almost table-level before tugging on Foggy’s elbow until he got down on her level. She whispered in his ear while Kirsten pretended nothing was happening and Peter chewed on the inside of his cheek so as not to interrupt this amazing display of stealth.

There was a collective groan at the couch followed by Wade scolding everyone for not cheating at cards better.

Peter stayed out of that shit because he could not lie to save his life and wasn’t allowed to join because of it. Wade had tried to teach him possibly a thousand times over the years, but alas. He was not made for it. Or at least, that’s what Wade told him so he didn’t strangle him.

Matt couldn’t cheat at cards, but he liked to steal them and was banished from the game for this reason. He lurked on the edges of it, however, biding his time until someone wasn’t paying attention so he could slip one off the table and bring it to Fogs like a trophy.

He was surprisingly good at it. He’d stolen two cards so far. A joker and an ace, Peter saw.

Matt didn’t care what the cards were, the object was quiet chaos.

Miles noticed him doing this after the second round of bullshit and, having made an unlikely ally out of the guy from the start, proceeded to start feeding him cards from his own hand, just to see what he’d do.

This was what sealed the deal for Matt on Miles. Halfway through the next round, he slipped half his stolen cards back into Miles’s hand and made off with the other ones for Fogs, and even Wade was stumped at how Miles had found the joker. He could have sworn he’d taken both out of the deck.

It was around round four that Wade caught onto this business and wrangled Matt into his lap to put an end to it. He congratulated Miles on his contract with the Devil but declared that any other alliances would be met with Peter being put on their team.

Matt then took to squirreling away some of Wade’s cards while he wasn’t paying attention and the game devolved into playing just to see how many he could get away with before Wade noticed.

The answer was nine.

Then the answer was recovered by its rightful owner and the thief received arbitrary and unusual punishment.

It was a sobering lesson to them all.

Matt considered Alma a work in progress and Miles an acceptable person to be in his presence, but he and Charlie did not get on.

They were reintroduced like two previously warring dogs. With Dave holding the nape of his daughter’s neck while Fogs kept Matt’s fingers in the crook of his elbow.

It was a pointless endeavor because Charlie took one look at Matt and said, “Wow, you got even more red-headed since last time.”

And Matt appeared to quietly resolve to kill her.

Dave recognized this and asked Charlie very patiently to revise her earlier statement. She agreed and threw out instead, “I read about you online. The newspaper said you got hit by a truck when you were little.”

And Peter watched a little of Dave’s soul die. He then referred to Matt to see how this had gone down with him and found him fairly blasé about it.

“Yeah, and?” was his response. Charlie was much interested in such an attitude.

“Did it hurt?” she asked.

Matt considered it.

“I actually don’t remember if it hurt or not,” he said, “I was a little preoccupied with going blind.”

“Woah,” Charlie breathed, “Did that hurt?”

Matt considered this too. Foggy, who must have had the grace not to ask all these years, watched him carefully.

“I don’t remember if that hurt either,” he admitted. “It must have, I guess. I dunno, they washed out the acid a lot and that hurt like hell.”

Oh, perfect. Add another tick to the trauma box for Double D then. Hell, add two while you’re there.

Charlie was fully invested in this gruesome tale.

“What did your mom say?” she asked. Matt shrugged with his only free hand.

“No clue. No moms around. My dad broke a rosary, though. I think he apologized to a doorframe a few times, too.”

Oh god, poor guy. Dave was really feeling for him too, he clapped a hand to his heart and pulled Charlie close to him. Charlie ducked out of her dad’s grip but didn’t quite escape the next one he got on her.

“If _I_ go blind, do you think I’ll get powers?”

Peter could just about see Matt trying to swallow the words, “I dunno, let’s find out,” and he appreciated that the guy was putting even that much effort into staying civil.

“No,” he managed to choke out.

Charlie considered this.

“Alright, well. I guess that’s that, then. Hey, can you find a dead person with your nose?”

Dave decided that that was enough and revoked her talking and visiting privileges. She stormed off in a huff, informing her father that he wouldn’t see the last of her, which he took with grace and reasonable nodding.

They waited until she was out of sight. Foggy patted at Dave’s arm sympathetically.

“Thank you for your service,” he said.

“Ehn, it’s nothing. She’s exactly like I was at that age. Better, if I’m honest. She hasn’t smoked or ditched school or anything like that yet. It’s mostly just fighting with other kids at school right now.”

Foggy and Matt conceded that this was, in fact, pretty impressive. Peter excused himself to make a phone call.

He called Michelle and begged her to remind him off all the horrible shit they’d done as teenagers so he didn’t lose faith in society’s youth.

She reminded him of the time they’d poured superglue under Flash’s desk so that his shoes got stuck. It was the same time they’d predicted his possible paths of movement in the classroom and had set up the tripwire rigs they’d appealed to make for extra credit in physics. They’d gotten caught (no shit), half the AcaDec team, and they’d all sat in Principal Morita’s office while he held his head in his hands and asked them why the hell they couldn’t just smoke pot on campus like everyone else.

Flash swore he’d quit the team after that, but he never had. He’d definitely tricked Peter into pulling a fire alarm though, so that was exciting.

Thus reaffirmed in his impression of today’s youth, he spun around and went back to rejoin the gym tour.

Team Red petitioned hard to see Team Daredevil to the airport and, usually, Peter would have invoked his Original Member vetoing power to save everyone from this experience, but Wade was with them and would have just used his own power to lock them in a stalemate.

That was fine, because Peter made it well known that whatever happened next was Wade’s fault.

What happened next was Alma sobbing in the airport lobby while Matt desperately tried not to have a meltdown of his own at being clung to.

Alma refused to part with her new mentor. She wouldn’t listen to Foggy’s reason or Angel’s demands or even Wade’s attempts at distraction.

“They don’t need you there,” Alma hiccupped into Matt’s shirt after Foggy and Kirsten explained that they had clients back home they needed to help. “We need you _here._ ”

And Matt was dying because he _knew_ , honey. That’s exactly why he had to get the fuck out now. If he stayed in the city too long, he’d be too tempted to start putting down roots again.

Peter sighed and broke into the discussion to kneel down next to Alma. He held his arms open and waited. She sniffed against Matt’s abs and blinked at him. He waited.

“No,” she whined once she figured out what he was doing. “Don’t wanna.” She reburied herself and Matt’s jaw twitched.

Peter didn’t move, he kept his arms out. She peeked out and whined at him some more.

Third time’s a charm.

She started crying all over again but reached out and took one of Peter’s hands. He pulled her in for a hug. Matt looked to heaven in relief.

“I know, kiddo, we’re gonna miss him, too. You’ll just have to put up with me and Wade for a while,” Peter soothed her. He glanced up at the others. “Maybe, if you’re really good, Daredevil will invite you to his wedding.”

Matt sighed and Foggy lit up like Christmas. It was good to see that Fogs was getting some enjoyment out of this whole affair after all, even if it was just slowly corrupting Matt’s small, traditional ceremony.

“Alright, whatever,” Matt grumbled.

And thus all tears were forgotten and there began anew the fight for who was going to be the flower girl.

While that was happening, Kirsten demanded a hug from everyone and then Foggy did the rounds. They both finished and stared accusatorily at Matt who had already had his fill of non-sanctioned human contact for the day.

Foggy cleared his throat.

Matt groaned and rolled his whole head and gave Peter a firm hug before allowing Wade to squeeze the life out of him. Angel decided she needed to get in on that to amp up the amount of antagonism going on in that exchange. Louis and Miles stayed the fuck out of it because they knew what was good for them.

They all said bye again, but right before the lawyers bopped off to security, Matt reached over and squeezed Miles’s shoulder. And then they were gone.

Dead.

Fucking.

Silence.

“What’s your problem?” Miles snapped at Peter and Wade’s slapped stupid expressions of shock.

How the fuck? How? He didn’t even _know_ Miles that well. It had taken months before Matt had even allowed Peter within three feet of him and he just? Fond pats? Already? Was it the cards? Was that all it took?

“I think I might hate you?” Peter thought out loud.

“Oooooh,” Wade sang, “Baby boy, you’ve gone and been _replaced_.”

“Yeah, no. I fucking hate you,” he decided.

Miles told them all to resoundingly get out of his face and leave him alone, but as they tramped out through the entrance of JFK, Peter could have sworn the kid looked pleased with himself.

**Author's Note:**

> matt doesn't actually hate any of the kids, he's just slowly evolving into his tertiary form: old man who shouts at clouds.


End file.
